I was stuck on the road without a laptop this morning, up an hour earlier than I thought I was because the hotel room clock was set an hour ahead (apparently they have double daylight savings time in Boston  now), and found myself watching one segment after another on CNN that had me by turns depressed and furious, with my head exploding repeatedly (I can’t wait to see the cleaning bill.)

1. First, there was a segment about how Hillary Clinton is attacking Bernie Sanders by saying that she supported the auto bailout, and implying that Bernie did not. As the CNN crew pointed out, Bernie opposed the bailout when it was part of the whole economic stimulus package,but voted for it, like Clinton, when it was severed from that bill. In other words, Clinton…and I know this will shock and disillusion many of you…was lying. This lie is the variety called deceit, a Clinton specialty. She doesn’t exactly say that Sanders didn’t vote for the bail-out, but that is the impression her words leave, and are meant to leave.

Get this: the reporter—I can’t find any of this exchange on the web—following Clinton’s campaign said (I am paraphrasing), “It isn’t up to Clinton to explain the nuances of his votes. That’s Sanders’ problem.”

No, you pro-Clinton hack of a lazy and ethics-challenged  parody of a journalist, it’s your problem and our problem, and because you and your Clinton suck-up colleagues won’t inform your viewers that a lie is a lie, it is a really big problem. Sanders did not oppose the auto bail-out, and Clinton, who knows that, is saying otherwise in the patented Bill and Hillary way. It shouldn’t be up to Bernie to try to unravel the deceitful false accusation; he shouldn’t have to deal with it at all, and wouldn’t if he wasn’t running against a shameless liar. I shouldn’t have to keep going on Facebook trying to explain reality to my ignorant friends who believe that Colin Powell’s handful of private e-mails during the Jurassic Period of State Department cyber-security made Hillary’s private server as pure as the ocean breeze, either.

2. Alisyn Camerota interviewed some young New York pol (can’t find any web record of this, either) who has joined the Dark Side and is spinning for Trump. The topic was Trump’s denial, completely contradicting known facts and his own words, that he didn’t repeatedly impersonate fake publicists to pitch his own virtues to journalists in the 70s, 80s and 90s.

This guy is infinitely more coherent, articulate and competent than the horde of mutants Trump usually puts on the air, and yet what he said this morning was so dishonest and disrespectful of the mentally fit that I would have thrown him off the air. First, he said repeatedly that it’s “a silly story” (This was obviously a scripted talking point). A potential President of the United States speaking to reporters using false identities and then brazenly lying about it to the news media is not a “silly story.” The conduct being reported on is not just silly but ridiculous, but that doesn’t make the story itself, or the issue of Presidential trustworthiness, silly. If Hillary Clinton spontaneously dressed up as Minnie Mouse and gave her speech in pig-latin, her conduct would be indeed silly, but the fact that she was the one engaging in it makes the news story very serious.

Why didn’t Camerota challenge this false categorization? I have no clue. Maybe she was sleepy too. Or maybe she is just incompetent.

Then this appointed liar went on to say that the story didn’t matter because polls show that Americans think it doesn’t matter. Polls equal reality! Polls equal values! Why don’t you understand this, Alisyn?

3. Completing the set was a videotape of the quote from GOP chair Reince Priebus, uttered in various forms all over the Sunday talk shows, that

“I think that all these stories that come out — and they come out every couple weeks — people just don’t care…I think people are judging Donald Trump as to whether or not he’s someone that’s going to go to Washington and shake things up.And that’s why he’s doing so well.”

Wait a minute, you pusillanimous, disgraceful weenie: Don’t tell me about “people.” These are your party members, since you allowed them to vote for Trump. It’s also your party, the party you allegedly “lead” in some warped form of the term. Does character, integrity, honesty and trustworthiness in the candidate the Republican Party is presenting as its considered choice to sit in the office of Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, and the Roosevelt matter to this party? Does it care? Because if these values don’t matter and it doesn’t care, it should just dissolve for the good of the nation and its culture. Let Trump start his own party from the dumbest, angriest, least admirable remnants of the GOP. Call it the “We Don’t Care” party,

Don’t shrug your shoulders at us, Reince, you weak, weak, weak coward.  Your dithering  and incompetence allowed this to happen. Don’t blame it on “the people.” You have an obligation to say, “Yes, it is wrong for the Republican candidate for President to stand for abysmal values and conduct that would make every President of the United States from Washington to Obama vomit in their mouths.”

Then do something about it.